Since last Sunday’s Ventura Marathon training run, I feel more relaxed and less anxious about the upcoming races, which is a great thing. However, the training run was so taxing on my body, this whole week was sort of spent on recovery, which is still continuing, in fact. It took almost 2 days for my legs to function normally. Now that the Santa Rosa Marathon is only 2 weeks away, it is time to concentrate on tapering. Read More…

It wasn’t a week with a lot of miles because it was part of tapering weeks. But the Ventura Marathon was holding a couple of training runs before the race, and I decided to give it a try this weekend. Today’s training run for me was only 18 mile long, which is a bit shorter than what I initially hoped to cover, but it also was a good learning lesson in terms of pacing myself. Read More…

The past week went well in terms of racking in the anticipated amount of mileage. And also, I came across a Runner’s World carbo-loading meal plan (a few weeks prior to a marathon race), which I found quite different from my carbohydrate concentrated meals (mostly pasta). And I put it to the test for the weekend long run, and the results are… so far so good. Read More…

What a week. A couple of major things to celebrate. The Boston Athletic Association announced last Wednesday (July 1st) that the Registration for the 2016 Boston Marathon opens September 14 (Monday) as I expected, which means the Ventura Marathon (9/13) is in. Now, it is official that I have two shots at getting qualified for the prestigious race – the Santa Rosa and the Ventura. And I was invited to celebrate the Independence Day with some of my hiking friends yesterday. Read More…

One of those days, or weeks where fatigue doesn’t subside quickly enough to make you feel like dragging everything and that it goes further to dampen your spirit. It seems like nothing really works to snap out of it. And that’s what happened to me. The past week was a disappointing week on a few levels, and I am glad that now I have left it all behind. Read More…

What began as a well planned out week resulted in a rather disappointing end. Because the weekend’s long run was supposed to be a 20 miler, I wanted to reschedule the runs throughout the week leading up to Sunday, and it went pretty good till Saturday when I hit the gym. And then the inevitable Sunday long run time came and I learned that things could unfold unexpectedly. Read More…

This past week had some challenges. One of those days when the level of self-motivation hits the bottom snuck up on me in the middle of the week. It was heavily influenced by the serious long day at work, and even though I bounced right back up and caught up with the next day’s mileage, the pressure on keeping up with the weekly mileage was mounting. Read More…